Post navigation

Valentine’s Day goes green for beer?

Asian night clubs, beer, sword-fighting, and the color green are not what people would typically refer to as romantic or associate with Valentine’s Day. However, this year Heineken has decided to market its product unconventionally by creating a campaign based on Valentine’s Day.

Heineken’s Serenade campaign has videos of a man and woman on a first date, running and dancing through an Asian night-club with jazz music. The man on the date is charming and wows the woman with his skills of swordsmanship, popularity and dancing. At the end of the video, the man and the woman both drink a Heineken and the phrase “open your world” pops on the screen. The video gives the impression that Valentine’s Day can be enjoyed by both sexes in far more exciting ways than the typical flowers and chocolates. Heineken rebrands itself as a more adventurous way to enjoy the holiday and for couples to open themselves up to new possibilities, while remaining appealing to both women and men alike.

Another aspect of Heineken’s Valentine’s Day campaign is the Facebook app which creates a personalized video for users to ask a friend out on a date through a song. This service promotes Heineken as a matchmaker of sorts. While the videos satisfy the users’ needs of asking out their romantic interests, they also give Heineken greater exposure. As Facebook users see the videos on their friends’ profiles, they will notice that Heineken created the video. The more that people see the advertisements, the more likely they will think of Heineken the next time they purchase beer.

Heineken has certainly taken an unconventional approach to marketing itself during the Valentine’s Day season. Unlike other companies sticking to the traditional concepts of love and romance, Heineken has chosen to use the holiday as a chance to market itself as an adventurous matchmaker. If the campaign proves to be a success, it is possible that we will see many more companies choosing to taking this unique approach to marketing their products in future Valentine’s Day seasons.

8 thoughts on “Valentine’s Day goes green for beer?”

Heineken has been really outdoing themselves this year. Most notably they have been able to distinguish and brand their product to the consumer on such a deep level that I think I want a Heineken right now. By branding Valentines Day differently than before they have been able to garner attention to their “fun and exciting” commercial making green the real way to everyone’s heart.

Heineken created a very unique commercial, that is definitely out of the box. As far as advertising this as a Valentines commercial i would label this as a failure from the women standpoint. The meaning of valentines day has not changed, women still want the same thing, romance. Although this commercial did include a couple having a spontaneous adventure, it is not what i would depict as a great Valentines Day, especially not a Valentines that included beer.

First, thank you both for your comments. Second, Ariel, you suggested that the date Heineken portrayed isn’t a very romantic one for a woman. It may be that Heineken is trying to rebrand what a date is. The beer company may be trying to challenge the decades old concept of having a nice quiet dinner and exchanging love notes at the end of the night. Obviously whether this is successful or not is up to the individual viewer, but isn’t it occasionally effective for ad campaigns to challenge traditional beliefs in order to change the opinion of their product?

Heineken’s approach to Valentine’s Day is brilliant. In this day in age everyone is looking for the next best thing and with more and more people despising the traditions of Valentine’s Day, this advertisement gives a whole new spin on the holiday. It shows couples that they don’t have to revert back to the normalcy of roses, candlelit dinners, and heart shaped boxes of candy. As well as showing single people that they can enjoy the holiday with their friends over an ice cold beer. I truly think this ad will make some single people out there a little more acceptable of the holiday as they turn to Heineken for comfort instead of a significant other. It will also release some of the stress the holiday causes by making the need for reservations and a certain chocolate less important. Just buy them a case of Heineken and it’ll be a great night!

I loved this commercial! A handsome, charming guy, woos the girl through an adventure rather than the sappy old flowers and chocolate bit. I’ll have to disagree with Ariel B in saying that the commercial is a failure for women. I would enjoy being taken out like that on Valentines day! (Or any other day!) This is a true success and I think it will pay off for Heineken to have gone to bold route. It’s attention grabbing, funny, and altogether a great ad.

Heineken’s approach of marketing towards Valentines day was a very interesting selection in my eyes. I saw on Facebook a girl say something about Valentines Day not being important and if you have a good boyfriend he would treat you just as well the other 364 days of the year. Going off of this, it makes me think that some people have lost their holiday spirit. Its not supposed to be one night of good, its supposed to be 364 of good and one of unforgettable romance and that is what this commercial is going off of. Not only are they marketing their beer as thrilling and unpredictable, but now it also has a slight brand of being romantic. Heineken is tweaking their brand image and trying to bring a new market to their beer. They played this advertising card very well and I would be surprised if it does not pay off well for them.

Too often consumers overlook commercials because of their repetitive nature. The same is true for the Valentines Day season. I mean how many commercials about chocolate and flowers would you really want to watch? Heineken took a risk by branding Valentines Day as a holiday that could be enjoyed by singles, who also drink beer. Heineken took the risk of re-branding not only their beer but also Valentines Day itself, and its just different enough that such a risk will pay off.

I really enjoyed watching the “behind the scenes” video of the new Heineken commercial. It was entirely playful and entirely staged (No Boom operator worth his/ her pay, would let an actor take the mic). I see this video as another aspect of the brand. Heineken is owning up to the ridiculousness of their commercial in the same postmodern vain as Morgan Spurlock’s “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold”. This portion of the ad campaign (the “making of” clip) opens up the brand as even more playful and outrageous.
Well played, Heineken, well played.